Winter travel in Alaska

One of the things that would only happen in Alaska:

When people travel by small plane up here in the winter, they're required to wear all of their winter clothes (snow pants, heavy coat, hats, gloves, etc.) in case of a plane crash, so that they have a chance at surviving in the extreme cold.  When Jeff flew out to the village on his first trip, he was fully clothed for winter just in case.  High school sports teams often travel from village to village for games, and are required to do the same.

Now, the river is frozen enough that people are driving on it, but there are still alot of good sized holes, so they have to drive carefully to avoid them.

We have a lake here called H Marker lake, which when frozen in the winter time, makes the road system in Bethel an actual loop instead of a horseshoe shape.  The other day, I took a taxi to church and the driver had to go over the lake to drop someone else off first.  It threw the three of us passengers for a bit of a loop when he veered off the "road" and did some donuts on the ice!  So then later Jeff and I had to do it too!  We're not the only ones; we have a good view of the lake from the house and often see people do the same thing.  I've never done donuts before, anywhere, so it was alot of fun!

Winter is definitely here!

Well, winter is definitely here, as the current temperature is 2 degrees with a real feel of -29.  And it's only November!  We've all shifted into the winter jackets and long underwear and gloves.  The unfortunate part is that the amount of snow on the ground is such a small amount, I'm not sure it can actually be measured.  :/  Everyone is hoping that it "warms up" soon, so that we get more snow.

Last weekend, we had freezing rain and by Wednesday, everything was soo slick!  We hadn't gotten our winter tires on yet (had an appt on Saturday) so driving was treacherous.  By then, the ice over EVERYTHING looked to be about 1/2 an inch thick.  It's very dangerous.  School was cancelled on Tuesday and Wednesday because it was so bad.  There were two school buses that had slid off of the road and on the way to work, we passed a couple of taxi's off the road too.

Our driveway has a slight hill in the middle of it and it's slightly crooked, and on Wednesday morning, we couldn't get the car to go over the hill because it kept on sliding so badly.  Even worse, we have a fairly large ditch on the other side of the driveway that's filled with about 3 feet of water (probably all ice right now), and every time the car started sliding on our crooked driveway, it was toward the ditch.  We ended up taking a taxi to work that day and Friday and by Friday night, we were able to drive the car around the house where it was flat, so that we could get it to the appointment today to get the tired changed out.

When I left work that evening, I slipped on the ice landing on my back and my head smacked into the curb, so Jeff decided that I was too much of a klutz not to have cleats on my shoes.  So we invested in two pairs which helps get traction.  It's not so bad now. (Oh, and I'm fine thanks.)

Perspective?

Interesting!